


here again, at the end

by telanaris



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: A little, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Monsterfucking, Multi, Multiple Orgasms, Other, SPOILERS FOR REVERSED END, SPOILERS FOR THE WORLD, Self-Insert, Smut, Spoilers, check warnings in chapter, fem!dom, gender neutral reader in chapter 2, multiple male orgasms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-12-27 00:02:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18292832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telanaris/pseuds/telanaris
Summary: When you glide your hips once more against Julian’s, he wails, frantic and ecstatic at once. He tucks his feathered head against your neck, his uneven breathing muffled against your skin, but you can feel each moan he makes in the way his lips vibrate against you. His feathered thighs are slick with his own spend—you’ll have to clean him again later—but for now he’s just glistening, trembling, yours.Yours only, at the end of the world.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: MONSTERFUCKING BELOW, some dysmorphia on Julian's side (shame and fixation about his new body)
> 
> PLEASE NOTE: Part 1 is written for AFAB!self-insert reader. Part II, however, is written for a gender-neutral reader.

 

How long have you been here? The twin piles of tankards beside the two of you never seem to grow any smaller or taller. Time passes only through actions: you cannot count minutes, or hours, or years, but you can make lists of tasks. 

Step one: clean the glass from the floor. (Julian’s feet, when you see them the first time, are horrific: blood crusted over wounds that keep re-opening; scars between his toes.) 

Step two: file talons. Julian’s a caged thing, after all, and you told him you’d take care of him. There’s naught but knives to use in the Rowdy Raven, but you find a small one that has a nicely serrate edge, and work slowly—patiently—until you’ve worn away the flaky, dead edge of his talons, smoothed them to something like points. (He doesn’t _mean_ to hurt you, when he does, and anyway, it never really hurts that badly. [Hurts _well_ , if it does.] But you can’t bear the look on Julian’s face when he sees he’s drawn blood. So, like clearing the glass from the floor, this care is for both of your sakes.) Your magic helps you avoid the quick, keeps his fingers unbloodied.

Step three: he should be preened, too. Maybe you can do that with your hands—with magic?

You warn him first. “I want to try something, okay?” Then you pry the latest tankard from his hand (the piles grow no smaller nor taller but, you think, he’s drank less—though the pile never changes, you think the amount of tankards he’s emptied is less than it was when you arrived) and rest it on the table, before swinging a leg over his and dropping yourself neatly into his lap. 

“Oh. Okay,” Julian says, his voice pitched somewhere between pleased and wary. Tentatively, he brings a hand to each of your thighs, feathered wings settling behind him, the dulled nubs of his talons brushing against your skin through your skirt. “I mean, I’m not complaining.”

His eye is wide, but his cheeks are pink. No—no, that’s not what you hand in mind. (What would that even _mean?_ You find yourself wondering, for what is neither the first nor the last time.) But… you don’t mind the look on him, some of the old longing back in his face. You let it go without comment. 

“I want to try and preen you a little,” you tell him, weaving your fingers through the long feathers at his shoulders and running your hand down the length of them, smoothing them. “Is that okay?”

If anything, Julian goes redder in the face—this time, however, it’s not due to the vague arousal of having you in his lap.

“Oh, y-you don’t have to,” he stammers, uneasily, and he begins to shake beneath your hands. “It’s, um—it’s really not necessary, it’s not like I—”

“I _want_ to,” you repeat emphatically, cutting him off. “I told you I’d take care of you, and I’m going to. You can’t be comfortable like this,” you say, running your hands over one of the longer feather’s barbs until they lay flat. You add, with a sultry rumble, “Besides, Julian—you’d look so much _prettier_ if you were clean, feathers shining.”

Julian’s eyes widen again. Then he makes a disgusted noise and turns his eyes away, mouth twisting into a grimace. 

“You’ve got to be joking.”

That won’t do—you won’t have it. “Hey. Julian. _Julian,_ ” you insist, takings his head between your hands and turning it to face you, so that he has nowhere to hide. You smooth your thumbs over the delicate feathers on the top of his cheeks, then kiss your foreheads together. 

“You are not a demon, do you understand?” you tell him, whispering the words softly between you. “You are not a monster. You are the person I love above all others—that’s it, that’s all that matters.”

Julian’s expression softens; the black of his eyes shrinks to nearly nothing. (He insists he isn’t doing it on purpose, but the way his pupils behave seem to have nothing to do with the light anymore, and everything to do with his mood.) Some of the skepticism lingers, but when he speaks, his voice has lost it’s edge. “Are you—you’re sure? You’re not just doing it because you feel like you have to?”

“I’m sure, Julian,” you tell him, mouth tugged wide by your smile. “ _Of course_ I want to, want to touch you. Take care of you.” You lean forward to press a quick peck to the corner of his mouth, before settling back in his lap and combing your hands through the feathers on his chest. “Fluff up a bit for me?"

Julian swallows, but then he takes a deep breath and obliges. He’s always self-conscious when you ask him to do something like that—something he wouldn’t have had to do before, like fluff his feathers, or let you clip his talons—and you know there’s a part of him that even now is still holding back, unwilling to believe that you are real, that you are not an illusion, that you accept what he has become and love him still despite it. Fine—you’ll teach him.

“That’s great, Julian, that’s perfect,” you tell him, sweetly, then bring both your fingers to Julian’s throat. You traded Scout your deck, and your connection with the Arcana has been severed—but not the connection to your own magic. You call a simple cleansing spell to your finger tips, then begin to smooth them through the feathers on the column of his throat, his collarbones, the notch of his clavicle. Julian isn’t quite looking at you—his gaze is fixed determinedly on the ceiling—but his throat jumps under your fingers as he swallows, and this close you can see the faint sweat breaking out on his brow.

“Easy,” you say, so softly it’s almost inaudible. Julian closes his eyes and swallows again, but then you can feel him relax beneath you, some of the tension going out of him. Almost imperceptibly, he pushes his body closer to your touch. Despite himself and all the self-consciousness holding him back, he’s enjoying this.

You smile at him, working your hands from his throat down to his chest. Where you have already cleaned, the feathers gleam, shining and straight. “S’not so bad, right?” you ask, running your fingers delicately along the feather’s barbs until they come together. Where some have been left askew, you tuck them back into place. 

Julian opens his eyes. There’s a reluctance in them, but a relief, too. “…It’s not so bad,” he agrees, quietly, after his initial hesitation. “It does feel nice, actually. Less itchy, now.”

“Good!” You widen the space between your fingers, comb them down the feathers on the front of his body, from throat to stomach. “Julian, that makes me really happy to hear. See? It doesn’t have to be all suffering. I’m here now, we can make this work.”

Julian doesn’t answer. His eyes roll back into his head, purple lids fluttering closed. Then his brows come together, and he clamps his mouth shut… but he cannot wholly stifle the sound building in his throat. He hears it, and you hear it, and he _knows_ you heard it; his eyes fly open, and his cheeks go red.

How long have you been here? Minutes, months, years. In all that time, you’ve kissed him plenty—you’ve both lost count. 

But you’ve never done more than that.

You swallow, and find your throat suddenly dry… but the only drink you’ve found in the Hanged Raven is alcohol, and right now, drunk is the last thing you want to be.

“Julian…?”

“It’s nothing. Let’s not talk about it.” He shakes his head, but there’s no getting the blush off his face, and his bottom lip quivers as if to spite him. “That’s enough for now though—we’ve an eternity to clean me up—best not to get all the excitement over with at once, right?”

You don’t answer. Instead, you comb your hands through the feathers low on his stomach, near his groin, nearest to where you sit in his lap. 

Julian chokes back an involuntary sound—a truly desperate sound—and you can feel your own cheeks heating in response. You move your fingers down the feathered stripe on his chest more slowly, measuring the muffled wail he makes until you find a spot he seems to really like being touched—then you press less gently, scratching lightly between the feathers with your nails.

His hips buck up off the bench against yours, but his mouth sends a different message. “Stop—stop, stop—please, this isn’t…”

You pull your hands away at once, alarmed by the raw pain in his voice. He looks at you, crestfallen, hopeless; then he can’t look at you at all. He tears his eyes away and focuses instead on the patch of feathers on his stomach, but that only makes him grow more melancholy. 

“I’m sorry. I’m not… I’m not the same man you loved.”

Tentatively, watching closely to make sure he doesn’t flinch from you, you lower your hand and wrap it around his. Your thumb swipes over the smooth, grey scales. 

“Julian, we’ve been through this,” you tell him. “I love you. You are _exactly_ that man.”

His face twists, the pain on it evident now. “No, I don’t mean—not like that—I mean, _literally._ ” When he exhales, it sounds less like a breath and more like a sob. “I’ve changed, I’m… I don’t have….”

 _That’s_ what this is about? Absurd, ludicrous—you won’t stand another minute of it. You lean over him and capture his mouth in yours and kiss him fiercely, with greater hunger than you’ve allowed yourself to since you arrived her. Julian whimpers between you, but then you feel his hand (still so gentle, so cautious, so afraid) on the back of your neck, holding it gently as he deepens the kiss. When you run your tongue along his bottom lip and nip at it gently with your teeth, he shudders beneath you.

“I love you above all others,” you murmur against his mouth. “So, what _do_ you have?”

Julian pulled back from you so quickly his head smacked the wall behind him. “Excuse me?” He blinked, perplexed, then shuddered—then laughed, uneasily—then blinked again. “What do I—I’m sorry, I think you’ve misunderstood. There’s no way you—”

“What _do_ you have?” you repeat, and you press your ass back against his lap. The gasp Julian tries and fails to hold back sends a thrill running through you, an old ember coming aflame. “You’re aroused,” you point out, matter-of-factly. “You haven’t been gone so long that I’ve forgotten what that looks like. So where does it feel good?” you ask him, trailing your lips from his mouth to his jaw. “Where should I touch you?”

Julian is shaking fully beneath you, now—you can feel him, practically humming with the need to be loved, to be touched—but still he holds himself back. “No, you—you don’t—I should be asking you.” His voice turns pitiful, threatening to crack. “You can’t—you come here, and you offer me these things—beautiful gifts, and I can’t—how am I ever going to give _you_ pleasure, the way I am now?”

That’s sweet, but you’re not terribly worried about that. You and Julian have always been creative when it comes to finding ways to get each other off.  More difficult—more _important_ —is convincing Julian that you want him.

You duck your head beneath his jaw, breath ghosting over the skin of his neck. “Do you remember this?” you ask him, pressing a kiss to Julian’s skin, muscles taut beneath it. “Do you remember the theater, and asking me to bite you? It’s just like that. Nothing harder than that,” you say, burying your face against his neck. You nip at his skin, bite until it bruises, then command him: “Tell me how to touch you. Show me how you want to be touched.”

Julian doesn’t… but he does whimper, and tilt is head to the side, and when you latch your mouth higher on his neck, near to his ear, he moans.

Blood rushes in your ears, heart pounds in your chest— _you’ve missed that sound so much._ “You sound gorgeous, Julian. That sound—I never thought I’d hear it again.” You lick the notch of his jaw, nuzzle your face against the feathers on the side of his neck— “Tell me how to touch you.”

He sobs and thrusts his hips up against yours, relents: “Between my legs, between my legs…”

You don’t waste a second. You lift yourself out of his lap and smooth a hand down Julian’s stomach, reaching first between your legs, then his. Fingers find only matted feathers and filth—then, something not. Something not unlike flesh, something that feels swollen. 

Whatever it is, Julian gasps when your fingers find it; he nearly doubles over, bucking his hips up into your hand. How you’d like to touch him! Touch him now, finally, when he is seeking touch—but not yet. Instead you swing your leg over his, rising out of his lap.

Julian’s eyes fly open, stricken. “Wh-where are you—”

“Spread them,” you tell him, reaching for a chair and dropping into it.

 _“What?!”_ Julian exclaims; in the undignified and half-shrill way he speaks, the word is almost a squawk.

“One foot on each table,” you tell him, evenly, slapping gently at the inside of his thigh. “Come on. Put them up.” Then, narrowing your eyes and running your hands down his thigh, combing the feathers there, you ask him, “Or have you spent so long alone in the dark that you’ve lost your appetite for my commands?”

A shudder goes through him—and without your weight in his lap, it rustles all his feathers; when he shakes at your voice he makes a sound like the wind through leaves. His cheeks grow redder, and he tucks his lip between his teeth… then lifts one foot, then another onto the tables. 

With his legs spread nice and wide like this, you have a better view of what you’d touched earlier. There’s a little pink ring, vaguely glistening, definitely swollen—a neat, puckered little bulge. The sight of it—the memory of how Julian had shook in pleasure when you’d barely brushed it—put an idea in your head that you hastily shake out. _Not yet._

“Obedient as ever,” you manage to tell him, then scoot your chair closer between his legs. “I’m going to clean you up a little first, okay? That seems best. Just tell me if there’s anywhere that you’re too sensitive, or if it’s uncomfortable, yeah?”

“Y-yeah. Okay.” 

You watch his face carefully as you bring your hands between his legs and, slowly, begin to clean the feathers between his legs. They’re smaller, mostly, and the work is easy. Julian will hardly look at you. You can tell he’s embarrassed—after all, he’s only in such a state because he’d given up on himself, let himself go (not that you blame him, terribly; maybe he didn’t even know _how_ to take care of himself)—and more than a little ashamed. But he has not been touched—not touched intimately, not like this—in such a very long time, and though the cleaning humiliates him, it arouses him, too. You try not to look too long and hard at the swollen sex between his legs, pink drawing the gaze like a bullseye in all that feathered black. 

Every so often, Julian makes a little keen of pleasure and it goes right through you, pools heat in your gut, slickens you. Nice as touching him is, though, you’d like to be touched, too—someway, somehow.

When they all sit flat—when Julian’s feathers are straight and glistening—you let go, and push back the chair behind you, making space. The sound of it scraping against the floor rouses Julian; he opens his eyes, blinking slowly. When he sees your hands untying your clothes—stepping out of your underwear—he straightens. His hands grip the edge of the bench, talons tapping against the wood, and the feathers on the sides of his neck stand on end.

“What—wait, wait a minute—!”

You step towards him, and slide a hand beneath the joint of his leg. “I’m waiting.”

Julian swallows. “I… what are you… you’re naked.”

Something about the way he’s looking at you makes you nervous. How long has it been since Julian saw you naked? How long since the wild night they’d spent on the sloop in Death’s realm? Whatever was going to happen—and maybe nothing was going to happen, certainly it wouldn’t without Julian’s full-throated agreement—it wasn’t going to be anything like that. 

But, you reminded yourself, that didn’t mean it couldn’t still be good. And you and Julian had always been pretty creative about finding new ways to get each other off, so you know by now that he is fairly open minded, where such things are concerned. You can’t unclench the fear of his rejection from around your heart, but you won’t give into it, either; still, when you answer, your voice is unsure in a way it hasn’t been thus far.

“I just… I, uhh….”

No; you shake the anxiety off. This is not a time for hesitation. You want Julian to feel wanted; you want him to feel beautiful. That’s worth the risk of bravery.

“I thought, maybe, we could scissor a little. If you wanted. If that works.”

Some of the color from his face falls to his neck, colors the oft-grey skin rosy. “Is that—that’s why you cleaned me? You wanted to…?”

He’s looking at you incredulously, mouth hanging open in shock. Nervous, all you can do is nod in reply.

“ _Yes._ ” It rushes out of him soft as wind stirs the grass, and his hand finds the back of your knee, and guides it closer. “Yes, I want—that’ll work—”

You’re already wet, dripping. It takes no further convincing for you to interlock your legs with his, and lower your sex against his, holding one of Julian’s legs up in the air as you do. 

Julian’s teeth—sharper than they used to be—dig into his lip so hard they draw blood. Just the touch of you against him is enough to leave him trembling. When you notice, though, you bring your free hand to his chin— “No, no, don’t bite so hard, don’t hurt yourself.”

There’s a challenge in his hooded eyes when he looks at you: a challenge and a insatiable hunger.

“If my mouth is open—if I’m moaning—then I won’t be able to bite, will I?”

It sets your heart on fire as easily as dry tinder; its one of the most Julian things he’s said since you came to this place and found him here. It’s a stretch, but you manage to lean over him and take his mouth in yours, then you grind your hips against his. 

You taste the blood on his lips. When he cries out, back arching off the bench and mouth falling open, he smears it across your cheek.

It doesn’t feel quite right. Or, more correctly, it doesn’t feel quite _human_ , that which pulses and glides against you, puckers against your swollen clit, leaves you shuddering. It almost— _almost—_ feels wrong enough to turn you off.

But when your hips slow Julian whines and draws you against him, snapping his hips against yours, kissing his sex to yours—when the going between you goes slicker you can’t say if it’s your own doing, or something Julian’s new body has done, something you have no name for. _Your_ name keeps falling from Julian’s lips. Faster and faster until its running together, tumbling out of him.

His hand tightens around your shoulder, and his dulled talons dig into your muscle. His eyes squeeze shut. All of a sudden his thrusts go shallow and tight. The sound he makes is otherworldly, filled with ecstasy, and your thighs clench at the fierce friction of his body against yours—and then he is spilling, you’re sure it’s him, it’s too much to be you, thick seed gushing out of him and against you, smearing against your hips, dripping down your legs.

When it stops, Julian collapses against the bench breathing hard. He hardly gives himself a second to enjoy the feeling before his eyes fly open, meet yours.

“Oh—oh no, I’m sorry, I didn’t—damn it, is this how it’s going to be now?” he asks, going from guilt to anger to panic in the space of a sentence. He looks down at his own body and the place where it meets yours, and his face is overcome with horror. “I’m so sorry, this is the single most embarrassing—I didn’t mean to, please, what can I do for you?”

Your eyes widen in understanding. “Did you…?”

Julian’s face reddens. He nods. “But I—I want to take care of you too, if it’s going to be like this, we’ll have to find a way…”

“It’s okay, Julian,” you say, mustering a reassuring smile. It’s not the first time Julian’s been a little fast, though that was incredibly quick. It’s been so long, though—months, years—and you don’t want to push him too hard. You begin to lift yourself out of his lap, steading yourself on the table—your legs are still so tight….

But when you stand up and glance between Julian’s legs, he’s still swollen. Curious, you flick your gaze between Julian’s face and his sex… and is it your imagination, or does the flesh there give another twitch?

“Julian… do you think I could try keeping on?”

Julian looks startled, as though the thought didn’t occur to him. A pause, then he nods his head. “No harm in trying…” he says, the breathiness in his voice poorly concealed.

Slowly, carefully, you drape your leg over his, and lower yourself against him. 

Julian sucks in a breath and lifts his hips against yours.

“Yes. Yes, yes, please— _fuck._ ” The words tumble out of him, and he bucks his hips against yours weakly.

You’re dripping between the legs with the evidence of Julian’s first release, and his sex feels sticky against yours, but when it drags against your clit just so your whole body tightens; the muscles of your abdomen spasm, and Julian doesn’t miss it.

“Does that—is that good?” he asks, looking up at you. There’s such desperation in his eyes to please you, to be good for you—to take care of you, the way you’ve taken care of him.

“Yes,” you hiss, nodding. “Yes, it’s—is it still good for _you_?” 

Julian nods. “I think I can cum again.”

“ _Already_?”

“Is that bad?” Julian asks, meekly. You can feel his scaled hands seeking your hips, the feathers of his arms brushing against your sides, your thighs… tickling between your legs every time he shifts. “I can try not to, but I don’t know if I can—”

“No,” you say, cutting him off and jerking your hips against his. “No, don’t hold back—let’s see…”

Julian has always been easy to excite, but this is something completely different. It only takes a few thrusts of his hips against yours—each one a tease, they’re both already so slick, sloppy, it’s maddening, _none_ of it is enough for you—and then Julian is spilling again, his face wild, every part of him radiant with pleasure. 

Again and again, he finishes against you, only to take a deep breath and swell and start grinding his hips to yours with new urgency. Each time the sound he makes, the look on his face—it brings you closer to your own end. You’ve always loved the way he looks when he cums. 

“Please, please, darling, it’s so good, it’s _too_ good,” Julian babbles. His arm is tight around your shoulders but he’s otherwise limp as a fish, weak from all his shuddering and trembling. “I don’t know how much longer I can go on—I can’t…” The whimper he makes is pitiful, not a sound of pleasure but one of defeat.

“One more time,” you say, drawing your hips against his. “Can you—can you give me one more? Just to try….”

“Once,” Julian repeats with a nod. “Maybe twice. But I’m tired, I won’t be able much longer…”

Then you’d better make it count. What you need is more closeness, less space left between you; you plant your foot solidly on the floor behind you, wrap your arm around Julian’s back and curl your fingers in the feathers at the nape of his neck, bending your body over him. It’s harder to look him in the eye like this, but there’s more leverage. 

When you glide your hips once more against Julian’s, he wails, frantic and ecstatic at once. He tucks his feathered head against your neck, his uneven breathing muffled against your skin, but you can feel each moan he makes in the way his lips vibrate against you. His feathered thighs are slick with his own spend—you’ll have to clean him again later—but for now he’s just glistening, trembling, _yours._

Yours only, at the end of the world.

White hot pleasure tightens every inch of you at once—brows pinched, eyes squeezed shut, fingers tightening in Julian’s feathers—he knows at once what is happening. “ _Yes, yes, darling, cum on me, cum against me, harder, harder._ ” Your hips snap against his until you’re not sure where one touch begins and another ends, just a heady storm of friction and tingling and _tighttighttight_ Julian’s teeth so sharp so _good_ on your collar snapping your hips so hard Julian’s body thuds dully against the wood of the bench with each thrust….

…after, you fight for each breath. Silence seems so loud after the rush of blood, and everything feels intensely _more_. Tickle of Julian’s seed dribbling down your thighs, along the back of your calves. His feathers against the small of your back. Then your ass.

“That was gorgeous, darling,” he whispers, voice hoarse from his own pleasure cries. “Come here—you needn’t stand. Let me….”

If he was afraid to touch you before, he seems less afraid now. His hands find your hips, then your shoulders; he collects you into his arms, then hoists you up so that he can rearrange you in his lap. When he is satisfied, he presses a kiss to your brow.

He is so afraid of hurting you, but he has always—always—been so gentle with you.

“I love you,” you whisper, all the sound you can muster as you recover.

Julian turns his head to look at you, such longing and affection in his gaze that for a moment it stuns you. It’s everything you felt looking for him, all faith and determination, knowing one day you’d find him again. That you could not rest until you did.

“Love,” he says, slowly. “The word isn’t enough. The way I feel about you is bigger, hotter—stronger. More dangerous. That’s why he split us up, you know.” 

 

The back of his hand smooths across your cheek, then he folds his feathered arms around you like a cloak. Sweetly, he sighs.

 

“But now, you are back. And I will never let him take you away from me again.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader is gender neutral.  
> Warnings: SFW, reversed ending spoilers, angst, hurt/comfort
> 
> A/N: The text below was originally posted as part of my collection, 'and in the moment hanging on to you' on April 17. I am cross-posing it here because I want to have all my reversed!julian fics here, in one place, in a somewhat sensible order, for reasons. Apologies for double posting.

“This can’t be real. You would _never_ —and it’s been too long, it just can’t be.”

There is no way of saying exactly how long you’ve spent in the Hanged Raven with Julian. Time doesn’t pass the way it used to; its slippery, and harder to keep track of. You can’t even say for sure whether it has been weeks, or years. Indeterminate of length though it may be, however, you can mark it by milestones:

This is the third time since Scout had led you to his side that Julian had panicked, and talked himself into believing you aren’t real.

The first time, it had hurt you so badly. You asked yourself: why was Julian pushing you away? Was he even doing it on purpose, or was he sabotaging himself self-consciously? _Did it matter either way?_ You thought of that night on the docks, what felt like an eternity ago, Julian’s composure crumbling under the rolling, crushing weight of his guilt: “I can’t.” You thought of all the time he had spent here in this half-cursed tavern before you found him; vast, uncountable time, lost to loneliness and suffering. The first time he forgot you—forgot himself—you forgave him and, with great patience, talked him down from his denial.

The second time he’d done it, the hurt had been much worse. You had thought this was over—that you had both put it behind you. And yet, again, Julian had acted as though he did not know you—as though all the time you had spent caring for him had been nothing but a dream, an illusion.

This is the third time.

Julian paces across the tavern, his wings beating restlessly. Not for the first time, you realize how cramped he is in here—there isn’t really anywhere he can stretch to his full wingspan. He shakes his head, grimacing, baring sharp teeth.

“You’ve been here too long,” Julian says, turning to sneer at you. “The _r_ _eal_ you might stay for a little while, but no one would _ever_ stay with me as long as you have. I’m a monster—a demon. The- the things that you—if anyone ever found out the way you’d touched me…”

His voice pitches higher, a little hysterical. You take a step closer, stretching your hands towards him. “Julian, where is this coming from?” you ask him, gently. “What is this really about?”

Your fingers just barely brush his fingers; Julian bares his teeth and hisses, flinching away from you. His feathers ruffle. When they stand on end, he is a massive, hulking shadow; he becomes double his size.

“I don’t know what he’s planning for you,” Julian accuses, teeth glinting. “The Devil wouldn’t give me an inch, not unless he planned to take a foot, and with you!” Julian whirls on you, pointing a talon at your face accusingly. “With you, _oh,_ he gave me…”

But it’s too big to talk around, the feeling of being with you these past (weeks? months? years?) dreams, and Julian’s words fail him. He squeezes his eyes shut and turns away from you. Out of the corner of his mouth, Julian tosses his dismissal cruelly over his shoulder:

“I’m sure he’s got some twisted plan to use you, whoever or whatever you are, to torment me—to break me. Well, I won’t be a part of it any longer. All are welcome here—but not you. Get out.”

It’s like having cold water thrown in your face. But this is not the first time Julian has forgotten—or refused, out of the blue, to believe—that you are real, that you are with him; that after everything, you still love him. You’ve had to convince him before. You know, by now, what does the trick.

Julian is no longer looking at you. He’s moved into the corner of the tavern, nearer to the hearth—the furthest point in the room from the door, as if to clear you a path to go. He’s crouched on his grey, scale-covered legs; the talons on his toes make gouged marks in the wood floor. His hand cover his head, as if to prevent any possibility that he might catch a glimpse of himself in the shattered mirrors that line the walls.

Because he is not looking at them, he does not see your reflection mirrored back at him, growing larger as you approach. Gently you reach out and place a hand on his shoulder.

Julian hisses again in warning. “ _Leave me.”_ He flinches from your touch, but can’t quite bring himself to pull away entirely. You hold your hand steady on his shoulder, feeling Julian’s body warm to your touch, just like it always has.

A choked sob escapes him, half-caw as his bargain with the Devil tears at his throat. “Please… please go,” Julian rasps, hardly more than a whisper. “Please, take pity, and leave me alone.”

“I can’t,” you tell him, running your fingers lightly from his shoulder to his neck. Julian gasps, his breath hitching around another sob. “I won’t,” you insist, running your fingers along the back of his head. You sink to your knees behind him, your other hand rising to guide him to face you. “I’m real, Julian. I’m here.”

Julian relents, turning to look at you. His face is pink; his eyes are wet. But he can only hold your gaze for a few seconds before he squeezes his eyes shut, refusing to believe the evidence plain in front of him. A sob shakes him, disturbing all his feathers at once.

“How?” Julian asks, disconsolate and ashamed. “In all that mess out there, how could you have found me? How can you bear to stay with me, _lie_ with me, hideous creature that I am? It’s unnatural, it dangerous for you—”

You stop him with a finger to his lips. Julian actually whimpers a little—he is so starved for touch, even after the time you’ve spent with him, and his mouth is most insatiable part of him—but you only shake your head. You won’t stand to have him call your affection _‘unnatural’_ —it is as natural to you as breathing.

“I found you because I love you,” you tell him, firmly. “Because we are more strongly connected than any Devil’s bargain that currently binds you. I walked across four score twisted kingdoms to find you, and I would have gone twice as far and then farther. I would have died before I gave up looking for you. Whatever you think you are, there is only one thing I care about: _when I’m with you, I am home.”_

Julian stares at you, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, like he’s been slapped. His eyes water.

Hardly more than a breath, with reverence, he whispers your name.

Then he collapses against you, and you sigh in relief—you know he believes you. Julian sobs against your neck and wraps his arms around you. He does not trust himself to hold you tightly (he does not know his full strength) so he only holds you loosely, but presses his skin against yours for maximum contact. No such self-consciousness holds you back; you loop your arms around him and pull him close, pressing your face against Julian’s feathers.

Julian weeps against your cheek. “It is you—you are real. You’re so warm… I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it. Sometimes, I forget—”

“It’s okay, Julian,” you tell him, running you le hands neatly down the feathers along his spine. “I’m here to remind you. And I’m not going anywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The text below was originally posted as part of my collection, 'and in the moment hanging on to you' on April 17. I am cross-posing it here because I want to have all my reversed!julian fics here, in one place, in a somewhat sensible order. Apologies for double posting.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warnings: bondage, suspension, smut, (emotional) hurt/comfort, angst!, a lot of angst!, disgustingly emotional monster sex, julian hates on his new body a lot, *cloacal kiss (reader’s end of the kiss is gn/unspecified), fingering (julian receiving), julian gets off a lot, there is if you will pardon the pun… a lot of bird seed.

 

Time traps you in the Hanged Raven. Nothing ages or rots—nothing dies. The candles burn and drip, but their wax never diminishes; no matter how many times you attempt to sweep clear the floor, it remains covered in shards of mirror-glass. Interminable, changeless, formless time, but for one thing: you have spent that time with Julian, and he can be as inconstant as the wind. 

There are no windows here, nothing beyond the walls—no seasons. You and Julian have made your own cycle instead; the one you share in the place of the turning earth is less predictable, and more violent. Needy and devoted Julian will come to you, swelling, shining bright like the fattening moon; he will crawl on his knees the way the ocean throws itself upon the shore. But every time— _ every  _ time you begin to think you are digging him out of his shame, unshackling him from his guilt—as the moon darkens and the tide recedes—Julian withdraws. 

He will forget you, as he often forgets things; he will forget your name, or forget that you are real. 

(If you left him, now, you think that he’d eventually forget you had ever found him at all; if you let him, he will forget that he ever loved you.)

Or if he does not forget you, he will simply push you away more deliberately. He is ‘too sharp,’ ‘too hideous,’ ‘too dangerous’; he is too  _ ‘unworthy’ _ of you. (Julian’s words, not your own.) The phases of the moon, the tide that comes and goes: sometimes Julian loves you, and sometimes he doesn’t, and sometimes he does not love himself enough to  _ let you _ love him in return. 

(That is always the hardest. When he loves you, and refuses you even still.)

Like now: Julian is curled up on the other side of the Hanged Raven, wings folded protectively around his body, hanging around him like the oversized coat he used to love so dearly. Instead of the tavern bench, he sits on the floor, a hulking shadow of iridescent black among the shattered mirror glass and flickering candlelight. His hands clutch a half-empty tankard, but he has not drank from it in a long while; he stares into the distance, and he looks so desperately lost that it makes your heart ache.

“Julian,” you call him. “Julian, come here. Sit between my legs.”

Your voice startles him; abruptly, Julian straightens, nearly sloshing his Salty Bitters down his chest in the process. When his eyes find yours his brows knit together before he tears his eyes away, sulking. 

“Oh,” he answers, sullen and forlorn. “ _ You’re _ still here.”

Formless, countless time; you have no way of knowing how long he has been treating you like this, but it seems an interminable torture, and without good cause. The last time you had tried to lie with him, Julian had accidentally cut you. One of his talons had opened the skin of your arm, slicing through it neatly as a knife does soft fruit; the wound had bled so badly you’d needed to bandage it. Luckily, Barth had always kept a spare medic kit behind the bar, and you were relieved to find that in this strange world, it was just where the old barkeep had left it. Unluckily, Julian refused to help you bind the wound, afraid of injuring you worse if he tried to assist. 

That felt like days ago—and Julian has not touched you, or allowed you to touch him, since. Lately he’s taken to ignoring you best he can, in a feeble effort to encourage you to leave. He has not been this dejected since you first found him here… but if he thinks that will make you abandon him, he is sorely mistaken. You have no intention of leaving—least of all when it is so plain how badly Julian needs your help. 

“Of course I’m still here,” you tell him, gently. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere without you. Come over here?”

Julian shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “No. I can’t,” he says, hunching his shoulders and hiding his head beneath the feathers of his wing. His words come muffled. “If I touch you, I’ll only hurt you again, and I—I can’t let that happen.”

“You don’t have to touch me,” you reassure him. “Just let  _ me _ touch you, a little. The feathers on your head—that has to itch. Will you let me help you with that?”

Since the accident (since he spilt your blood) Julian has been running what passes for his hands through the feathers, tearing at them the same way he used to tear at his hair. But hair the feathers are not, and it’s left them bent out of shape, barbules separated and sticking up every which way. 

He needs a preening, badly, and he knows it as well as you. His eyes slip open at the mention. The candlelight casts shadows; the room is too dim to see Julian’s expression clearly from across the room, but you can feel the weight of his eyes on you, considering. But then he clenches his hands; his wings beat gently in protest as he tore his gaze away. 

“You shouldn’t—help me,” Julian whispers, low enough you can barely hear him. “Shouldn’t stay with me. I… you deserve so much better than this. Better than what I can give you.”

“What  _ do _ I deserve, then, since you seem to be such an expert?” 

You rise to your feet and your shoes disturb the glass on the floor; Julian turns to the sound, eyes wide, both red—one plague-stained, the other red from crying. No matter how many times you sweep, the shards on the ground seem to keep accumulating. They tinkle and break underfoot as you approach him, and Julian’s eyes stay locked on you. 

“Would you say I deserve to have the things I want? The things that I desire?”

Julian turns away, but watches you from the corner of his eye, torn between two agonies: desire and guilt, wanting you closer, feeling at the same time like he shouldn’t dare to want anything at all from you, that for a creature like him to dare desire anything was an egregious affront. “Yes,” he concedes, hesitantly, “but you don’t—”

“I  _ want _ to help you.”

You’re close enough to touch him now, and Julian does not look like he’d resist. He’s staring up at you, caught in that terrifying place between fragile hope and tight-fingered fear. You lay the warm palm of your hand against the top of his head, scratching lightly between his feathers, straightening them. Julian’s eyes slip close; he whimpers, melting into your touch—but then he catches himself and wrenches himself away, regarding your hand warily, shaking his head,  _ no.  _

“I can’t, I can’t—if I hurt you again, I won’t be able to forgive myself.”

“You can,” you tell him; Julian shrinks from you as you take a seat on the bench beside him. “It was accident. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me—that you’d never hurt me on purpose. Please, Julian, let me take care of you.”

Slightly, but not so subtly as to escape your notice, Julian turns his head towards you, eyeing the space on the floor between your legs. As much as he is trying to hold himself back, he is not immune to temptation. He has gone so long without being touched, and now that he has again felt the warm contact of a lover’s hands upon him, it is difficult for him to refuse it when offered.  _ Especially _ when the offer is to help him clean.

(Then again, Julian has never been good at goodbyes. Your love story is a history of Julian’s failed and abandoned attempts to push you away from him. On the docks beneath the summer moon he had told you he would hurt you, but that had not stopped him from stealing hungry kisses from you, even as he told you to leave him:  _ ‘One more, just one more,’  _ he had gasped, his hands tightening on your waist.)

(...You miss the feeling of his hands on your waist, talons or none.)

Julian’s feathers rustle as he regards you. Suddenly, his great wings shift then fold in on themselves, lying flat against his back. With his legs newly bent as they are, it is easy for him to shuffle towards you. His head hangs low (in apology? or with shame at his inability to refuse you?) but he leans back into the space between your legs, his forehead coming gently to rest against the inside of your knee. 

Lightly, you lay your hands on his shoulders, and bend to press a grateful kiss to Julian’s temple, where the smallest feathers meet what remains of his old skin. You breathe in the smell of him; he no longer smells not quite the way he used to, less of coffee and leather, but beneath the strange new musk is something you recognize, and it soothes you. 

Then, without further delay, you set to work. 

However long you’ve spent here, you’ve gotten pretty good at helping Julian preen, such as he does. The magic comes easy to your hands; you run your fingers between and along the feathers on his head, straightening them and smoothing the harried barbs back into place. Julian makes a low sound like a croak, chin dipping down toward in his chest no longer in shame but in pleasure; his feathers rise to accommodate your fingers, exposing more of his scalp to your reach. 

You work slowly and carefully, making sure to be thorough. In the places you’ve already finished, Julian’s feathers gleam. Whatever he is, whatever he has become, he really is beautiful, when he takes care of himself; you wish he would believe you when you tell him. 

“When was the last time you touched another person?” you ask him, quietly. “Before I found you, I mean.”

“Another  _ real  _ person? Not—not defending myself from demons, or… or the Devil, or his phantoms?” Julian grows quiet, considering. Then he sighs, his breath hot against your thigh.  “Not since I said goodbye to you, then. That was the last time that I can remember.”

Your heart aches for him. This terrifying new world had been lonely, but at least you’d had Scout—even Malak, for a time. But Julian… Julian had been utterly alone, without his friends and family, without a gentle touch.

It’s not a memory you care to linger on, but you’re trying to make a point. “So, you have not touched anyone since before your… before you started to change.”

Between your legs, Julian makes a derisive sound, a laugh without mirth. “I know this will shock you, but there hasn’t exactly been a retinue of people passing through looking to cuddle with the likes of me.” 

Then he shifts uncomfortably, adjusting his posture; you can hear his claws, even dull as they are, scratching against the wooden floor. “The truth is, well... I didn’t even want to touch myself, after it started. Unless I was pulling out the feathers, which was both painful and unproductive.” His voice quiets, begins to waver. “I, uh... stopped crossing my arms, I…. The feeling of feathers between my legs if they rubbed together meant I even came to hate walking. Anything that reminded me of what I was, I found intolerable.”

Something terrible and hot burns in your chest. “Because you despised this body you didn’t use it—you aren’t used to it.” It’s a little hard to speak around the emotion that seems to have taken up residence right in your throat, but you manage. Your fingers trail down the sides of his neck, not to clean him but to sooth him. “Julian, you’re like a just-born fawn, fresh from the womb and surprised by the length and strength of your legs; you haven’t quite figured out how to stand yet. And we tried to  _ run _ .” 

Julian shudders, a great heave that leaves his feathers rustling. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it.”

“Maybe not.” Your hands smooth along the feathers on the sides of his head, petting him in the way he likes best. Julian whimpers, but you lightly rake your nails against his head, and the whimper deepens into a satisfied grunt. “But you  _ can _ get better at using it. Understanding your strength, your reach… that takes  _ use, _ Julian. So I’d like to keep practicing. And we’ll be careful, and you’ll learn your body, and you’ll get better.”

Another shudder runs through Julian’s body. Your heart demands that he be comforted; you rest your hands on his shoulders and lean to kiss him again, swooping down to press your lips to his cheek. But when your mouth meet the line where flesh turns to feather, you find both wet. 

Then you recognize his shudder for what it really is.  _ ‘How long has he been crying?’ _ “Julian—!”

“I’m sorry,” Julian says, cutting you off in a high-pitched whisper on the edge of a sob. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry you came all this way—that you found me, after all that’s happened—and I can’t give you what you want, can’t give you  _ anything— _ ”

“Julian, all I want is to  _ be with you _ .”

“That’s exactly my point—you can’t!” Julian grieves, launching to his feet and wrenching away from your touch. He crosses the room, wings flipping uneasily, unable to look at you. “We  _ can’t _ be together, not in any way that doesn't put you in danger. We tried and we failed—and we were so careful.” Then Julian spins, his eyes wide and wild, imploring. “What if I’d cut you worse? Worse than you could heal from? If you had come all this way, and I had—if you—! I couldn’t bear it...” 

He sinks into a booth on the opposite side of the room, collapsing on the table in defeat. He buries his head in his arms, eyes closing. Out of nowhere, a tankard materializes; a spectral hand lifts a bottle and fills the tankard with liquor. Julian does not so much as bat an eye; he lifts the tankard to his lips, and drains it in one go.

Beneath his eye, you see a few small, new feathers erupt from beneath his skin, blooming shining black on the high rise of his cheekbones.

“I can’t make you leave,” Julian says, wearily. He does not look at you; he keeps his eyes trained on the tankard in front of him, as the same spectral hand refills it. “But I won’t give you more reasons to stay, either. If you stay, you are my drinking companion only; I can’t bear—I won’t have you touch me again.”

No—interminable, changeless, formless time—you are not going to spend it like  _ that. _ You rise to your feet, cross the room, stand at the side of Julian’s table and take his chin firmly in your hands. Immediately, you wish you hadn’t; Julian is a wreck, devastated, mad with grief and self-loathing, resigned to the belief he is deserving of both. It feels like a knife slipped between your ribs, to see him look so miserable. 

(How can he expect you to leave him like this? You will not, you won’t; you will fill him with affection until it crowds out his doubt.)

“A long time ago,” you tell him, thumb stroking his chin, “I told you that you were allowed to be selfish sometimes. You still are. Whatever you did or didn’t do, you’re allowed to  _ want _ things, Julian.” You bite your lip, tilting your head to the side. “Do you not want me, anymore?”

Julian’s eyes squeeze shut; tears leak from the corners. “I do want you,” he whispers, barely able to force the words. “I do. But... I want you to be safe more than anything—much more than my own satisfaction.”   


“The two are not mutually exclusive.”

“Then tell me how,” Julian challenged, eyes opening to stare you down. “Tell me how I am to love you and guarantee I don’t hurt you. Tell me how to do that, and then you can do what you like with me, have me or not, I don’t care.”

There’s a blooming inside of you: a seed germinating, a flower of want unfolding, petal by petal.

“Fine,” you say, and your own desire holds you so tightly it makes your voice waver. But the tone of your words is certain, authoritative, and decisive. “I  _ will _ have you, then. And if you don’t want to risk hurting me, then you simply won’t be allowed to touch.”

Julian’s eyes widen. He straightens a little in shock; his grip on his tankard tightens… but in his cheeks, he grows furiously red. “I’m—what?  _ Allowed, _ as if that’s going to—”

“I will tie you,” you tell him, as matter-of-factly as you can in the midst of the arousal winding your body tighter, hotter. “I’ll bind you tightly, like that time not far from here, when you got caught in all those vines. You won’t be able to lift a finger to me….” 

You lean down, pressing your mouth close to his ear, your breath disturbing his feathers. “You won’t be able to move a muscle, but I will climb on top of you, and I will give and take pleasure enough for both of us.”

When you pull away from his ear, Julian’s eyes are locked on you. His pupils are dilating rapidly, expanding and shrinking in a way that (by now) you know means the idea excites him. His lips are pressed tightly together, but there’s a color rising in his cheeks… and the longer you hold his gaze, the lower his eyelids droop.

“Let me take care of you,” you whisper to him. “I want it—I want  _ to _ . Just like we used to, yeah?”

Interminable, changeless, seasonless time; the candles never grow any shorter. But Julian swallows, and the color in his cheeks deepens, and at last, he relents, his self-imposed solitude coming to an end.

“Yes. Please, yes.”   
  
  


  
  


It takes some creativity. After all, his legs don’t bend the way they used to, and never before have you had to contend with feathers. But you  _ are _ a magician—as Julian calls you, a “creative type.” In the Hanged Raven, you prove just how creative you can be.

He had sat so beautifully, so patiently for you; he had held himself just as you instructed, and moved with such reverent obedience when you commanded him onto his back, to lift his legs, to spread them for you. All the while he had watched you with half-lidded eyes, hardly daring to hope. Only when the knots were finished, when you hoisted him off the ground, did Julian’s eyelids flutter. Then—tied and restrained—he began to surrender to pleasure, safe in the clutches of his bonds.

Now, in the center of the tavern, Julian hangs upside-down. His arms are bound behind his back, his wings folded between and behind them. His hips hover a few inches above the floor, with only his shoulders and his head resting back against the floorboards. Red rope expertly tied lashes his legs wide, immobile. One is mast-straight, painting north-by-northwest; one great diagonal, from ceiling beam down to Julian’s narrow hips. The other leg is bound to itself, bright red knots binding thigh to scaled greying calf. His legs are spread; his sex, exposed.

Already he is swollen and trembling, bulging with spend. As you inspect your handiwork, there’s a zen-like bliss on his face. In all the time since you’ve found him here, you’re not sure he’s ever looked so peaceful. Being kept prisoner as a price for his freedom; Julian has always loved being restrained, but there’s something different, deeper, darker in the smile he wears. He can wriggle and writhe all he likes, but there isn’t a chance Julian could reach for you if he tried. Monstrosity kept in check by the strength of your knotwork. 

(He had complimented you on it once, all those months ago, the first time you’d tied him up—when he had four limbs and no wings, all pink smooth flesh without feathers.  _ ‘You’d make a great sailor, with knotwork like that.’ _ Ever since then you had dreamed of sailing away with him, setting out to see the world together. Maybe now, you would never sail to Nevivon [was there even, still a Nevivon? Was there any way of knowing?] or scale the Moonglow Mountains together. But that didn’t mean the future was forfeit entirely, that there was no good worth living for.)

It aches, sweetly. You wish it had not come to this; you wish he did not feel so much like a beast, an animal unsafe to approach unless harnessed and tied, but it is no matter. You will teach him. You will help him find freedom beyond the red jute and the rope biting into his skin, if not today, then the next. You have so much time, now—all the time you could ask for.

_ ‘You think this is the only way to keep me safe—you think you cannot help yourself. But I know you, Julian Devorak, and I look forward to the chance to prove you wrong.’ _

But now, he is dangling on a string in the center of the room; now, at last, he will let you touch him.

And you would like to touch him so very, very badly.

You reach for his straightened leg and lay your palm flat against the muscle of his calf. “Julian? Are you alright?” You massage circles into his skin, drawing him back from the heady trance of calm and comfort that the rope has lulled him into. “Does everything feel okay—nothing is too tight?”

On the floor, Julian’s eyelids flutter open, his eyelashes beating against his cheeks so prettily as he comes to alertness. “Mmm. What was that, darling?”

_ Darling _ . That word and the way Julian says it contains the answers to all his questions. It warms you just the way it used to, the same way it did the first time he’d called you by the pet name. The sound of it is soft and tender, now, when he’s too blissed out to be censored by his guilt.  _ Darling, dearest, doll _ —if you are still all of these things to him, then how could you look at him any differently than you used to? Julian wonders why you have stayed, but now, with his grey eyes cracked open and his body taut and ready for you, you can’t fathom why you would  _ ever  _ consider leaving.

“The ropes,” you tell him, drawing your hand over his leg, over the knots, from his calf to the inside of his knee. “Are they okay? Does anything pinch, or pull the wrong way?”

Julian grins up at you, the cheeky cavalier grin he used to give you. (Behind the safety of his mask, in the back of the community theatre:  _ ‘You don’t have to be gentle with me.’ _ ) “Nothing bites worse than it should,” he reassures you, his words a low purr in the back of his throat. He breathes in deeply, deliberately expanding his chest, straining against the rope before he settles back against the floor, a satisfied smile on his face. “Just a good as it used to be. You haven’t lost your touch at all.”

Ahh, you’ll show him  _ touch.  _ You run your fingers lightly along his thigh, careful not to snag any feathers the wrong way as you do. Julian bites his lip and groans gratefully, arching off the floor—but when your fingers find the swollen ring of flesh between his legs and brush it, he cries aloud. He curls in around his pleasure and his hips jerk; he shudders at the end of the rope, swings like a pendulum until the muscles of his abdomen finally un-clench and he settles, left panting from that one touch alone. 

Julian’s body trembles as he catches his breath. You step away from him and begin to undress. 

“Gods, Julian,” you purr under your breath. “You look so lovely like that, stretched out, legs spread, waiting.”

Julian turns to the sound of your voice. At first you think you’ve made a mistake—he  _ used _ to like praise, but will it still hold, if he so loathes the skin he now lives in?—but after a beat Julian blushes. His gaze never wavers as he watches you pull your clothes over your head. “Tell me?” 

A soft smile pulls at your mouth. You kneel on the floor beside him, running your hands over the grey skin of his chest. Though the color and texture of his flesh has changed, you have learned that Julian still very much enjoys being touched there. His eyelids flutter again as your nails trace lightly around his chest, scratch over the ghost of his nipples and he hums, bucking up into your touch. 

“You look powerful,” you tell him, a seductive pitch in your voice. “And your colors… black but green and purple too when the light hits you the right way. You’re magnificent. When you shake… when you tremble, it sends all your feathers quivering.” You drop your head beside his, whisper against his ear, “I look at you, and I see your grey eyes and your strong legs, I get every bit as turned on as I used to.”

_ “Fuck,” _ Julian breathes, the word slipping past his lips in a hiss. And then your hand slips between his legs, and he is beyond words. You tease at his sex with your fingertips, he shakes just the way you described: his feathers stand on end, rustle with every twist and clench of pleasure. His hips jerk towards touch, sex seeking fitfully the friction of your fingers, but the rope does not permit him enough leverage to connect. The pads of your fingers  _ just _ brush him, drawing along the wet ring of him. 

He breathes heavily. “Mmm— _ hahh,  _ ’m gonna—“

“No, you’re not,” you tell him, the command clear in your voice. “Not yet.” 

You withdraw your hand; Julian’s hips snap forward once, twice before he sobs and relaxes back against the floor. His face screws tight with interrupted pleasure; he buries his face against your shoulder, whimpering pitifully even as you stand and leave him dangling on the edge of release. You stand behind his legs, but he is barely paying any attention; Julian chases his breath, and you step one leg through his.

You steady yourself with a hand on his thigh—only then do you catch his attention. When Julian opens his eyes there’s only the barest ring of silver around his pupils, blown black and wide with arousal; his mouth falls open in shock, shock given up to a shout when you lower yourself over him press your sex to his.

“ _ AH!” _

Beneath you he cries out and whimpers, twisting, struggling against the rope. Your name slips passed his lips between tight little huffs of breath and lusty keens. Feeble movement is all his bonds will allow, but still he tries to grind against you, dull little jerks of his waist. You hold your hips steady, but your hand massages the muscles in his straightened thigh. Your free hand drops to his stomach, rubbing gently against the trail of feathers that leads between Julian’s hips, between his legs.

Julian rewards you with a choked sound in answer. His shoulders meet the floor and he presses against it, arching upwards, driving his hips to meet yours and gasping when they do. He ruts against you weakly, all the while muffling light little pleasure sounds, his eyes rolling back into his head. 

You pull your hips away and steady him, squeezing his leg gently. “Julian, I want to make you cum a lot,” you tell him, lowly. You rub the heel of your palm against the feathers above his groin. “Like, more than a couple of times in a row. Do you—is that going to be okay?”

Under the rub of your palm and the full brush of your sex against his, Julian can no longer string words together. But he nods frantically, thrashing in his ropes, and his hips give an enthusiastic jerk. 

“Gonna cum soon,” he gasps, and the muscles of his leg tremble beneath your hand, shaking from pleasure just from the thought, even with your hips held three inches from his. “Then you— _ oh.  _ Whatever you want, just the way you like, I’m—I’ll do whatever you like. Please, just, come closer, will you? Let me...”

If these were the old days, you’d have half a mind to tease him for that: his sudden obedience, in the face of his earlier recalcitrance, his refusal, his stubbornness. But not now. Now, you want only to reward him for returning to you—beneath you, in your embrace, shaking with ecstasy. 

(Where he  _ belongs _ .)

You fix your grip on Julian’s thigh, and plant your other hand on his shin, bound behind you. Then—smooth and slick from your own arousal—with agonizing slowness—you drag your sex against his. Julian keens, a sound that carries into a sob, then a gasp for air. When you pull back just as slow, it proves too much for him. Julian unravels. 

And he cannot hold himself back, sounding his release in gasps and whimpers as his spend slickers the space between you. It runs in rivulets up his stomach, pearling on his feathers; you feel the rest of it running thick and cold down your legs. 

But that’s just the first of it. However long you have been here, however changeless the time, you have not been unchanged, yourself: you have learned. However quickly Julian cums, he doesn’t  _ finish— _ he can cum and cum and cum, til it washes slick from your thighs to ankles, til the air is thick with the sour-sweet smell of it. The damp sticky mess it leaves behind—the necessitated cleaning that follows. And he’s always best when you fuck him near to death: afterwards, Julian is always to weary and content and  _ warm  _ to feel even an ounce of shame. 

You’ve made him cum  _ once.  _ No, he’s not  _ nearly  _ ‘finished.’ And the more you give him, the more his pleasure will build—you want his last orgasms leave him breathless and gasping and half-blind with the headrush. 

You quicken the pace of the thrust of your hips. 

A wretched gasp spills wetly from his lips, then a low moan, swollen with the sound of renewed arousal. His sex twitches against yours, swells anew. You rut against him with relentless accuracy, not even leaving him the space to catch his breath  before you bring him right to the edge again. And Julian does not ask you to. 

He has not looked like this since you first found him in the Hanged Raven: feathering from head to toe, but never has he looked more like  _ himself.  _ There’s a blush of color on his pallid chest, and in his cheeks; his eyelashes are so  _ long  _ when they press against his skin, when his eyes squeeze shut against the onslaught of pleasure. Something about him—something barely perceptible (something you catch in his aura; or in his face, but only because it is so dear to you)—has given way… released. He bites his lip, eyebrows knit, using wiggle room the rope allows him to press closer to you. When you grind in earnest against him, Julian shakes, then struggles against his bonds more violently. 

He cums a second time and the pleasure sends his body into fits. His hips jerk; he gasps for breath. When it’s over he’s still red-faced, less from arousal you suspect than from hanging upside down. But he shakes his dead  _ ‘no’ _ at the subtle question in your eyes, then groans, eyes rolling back into his head with delight as he feels—as  _ you _ feel—the evidence of his second orgasm dripping down your body. 

“Feels so fucking good, darling,” Julian groans. Then he’s rubbing himself against you again, and an unchecked smile curls his mouth softly. “ _ You  _ feel so good, I…” his voice drops. He huffs, then adds, a little guiltily, “I love feeling you like this. Slick and swollen and pressed against me, without an inch of space between us. Love feeling you twitch.”

(There is no measured way to mark time passing, if it is passing at all, but there is this: since the Devil separated you, you have not seen him so delighted about anything. He is never  _ ‘light’  _ at all, always buried beneath his heavy shame, but now he is effervescent, bubbling, riding the froth of his pleasure beyond the reach of his pain.)

“I love  _ you  _ like this,” you reply between breaths, and you begin to draw your hips against his again. This time, you set a deliberately slow pace. Julian’s leaked so much spend between you that you do not drag so much as glide against him, so frictionless it’s almost senseless, just the tingle of warm pleasure. “I’ve always loved getting you off, Julian, you know that. Getting to do it three, four, five times in a row?” You cut yourself off with a low moan of your own. “Watching you lose your sense a little more each time, watching you cum until you’re shaking all over from it… Julian,  _ nothing  _ compares to that.”

As it almost always does, the dirty talk pushes Julian right over the edge—his stomach muscles clench, and he thrashes in his restraints as his body tightens with his third orgasm, teeth clenched, jaw tight—the sounds of his rapture, smothered. You watch his face as pleasure contorts it. You grind wet and smooth against him, chasing every tantalizing throb of his sex against yours as he spills between you. 

It feels good enough to lift you into the heights of your own pleasure; it feels so good that, even after Julian finishes, you do not let up. 

Julian’s pleasure sounds mellow to a deep, throaty wail. By now, his body is fitful with twitching, weak with pleasure, too boneless to fight his bondage any longer. His skin jumps every time you touch him—trailing your nails down his thigh, an idle touch along his stomach. “Please,” he begs you, “oh gods, please—“

(Is there anything sexier about Julian than his enthusiasm? That is what you have always loved: the complete trust and abandon with which he gives himself to you, and now, he is close.  He has given himself over to the feel of the rope against his skin; he throws himself into the pleasure without reservation.)

“Please, what?” you ask him, gasping the words between thrusts; your own pleasure winds around your lungs and squeezes, making it hard to breathe, let alone speak. “Tell me—tell me what you want.”

“ _ Please,”  _ Julian sobbed again, “please, let me cum again—I’m close, I’m close—”

You are like Saint George, a dragon slayer out of one of the old stories; you are like the pictures of him set in colored glass, or painted in manuscripts. Beneath you Julian is steed, spear and serpent—and his sex is your saddle. You clutch his leg like a knights holds the shaft of their lance; as Julian’s pleasure pierces through him and sets his body singing, he wears the same look of tortured ecstasy the prey animal feels just before it surrenders to its ending. Julian pants, sucks in breath just to force it back out through clenched teeth and strained throat, skin-taut-tight against pitched-hoarse groans of satisfaction and excess. 

No, you are not like Saint George—you are not here to conqueror him. Not like that—never like that, not with blood and rent flesh, full eyes. Yes, you are hoping for a  _ little _ death: you will kill, for example, these long years of loneliness, until they are no more than a distant recollection. You will kill, if you can, the doubt and hate that Julian has cultivated within him for himself. But you would never raise a weapon to him. 

You love him. Yes, even here, even now—even as he is. 

“You are not monstrous.” You slow movements, drawing out each glide into a languid, artful thing that leaves Julian’s toes curling. “You are deserving of affection.” Julian whimpers in protest, but before he could argue to the contrary, you cut him off. “You are not incapable of tenderness,” you tell him, “You just need practice.”

Julian writhes beneath you, heaving and twisting as his body was buffeted by torrents of pleasure, as his fourth orgasm washed over and through him, galvanizing him. This time there’s no mistaking the sudden rush of warm fluid between you, sliding down your legs and up Julian’s sides. It’s getting less thick each time; you reach down to swipe away a fast-running rivulet of spend before it trickles onto Julian’s neck. 

Then he really is breathless, slack against the floor. “S-sorry,” he stutters. “I’m—I need a minute, just to… to catch my breath. Can you…?”

In the time before you’d lost him, you might have pushed him. Kept riding him until he was babbling in his native tongue and offering up your name like a prayer, until he couldn’t say anything at all, seized and immobile with euphoria… and then longer still, not stopping until his face was wet with grateful tears and their safeword, at last, slipped past his lips. 

But things were different, then. Right now, you have no desire to use Julian—to toy with him, to push his body to its limits. The truth is, neither of you have any idea what those limits are, and you love him too much to risk crossing them. You will be gentle with him—you will be tender. You press a kiss to the notch of his ankle, then rise and step through his legs before settling, cross-legged, on the tavern floor beside him. 

Julian barely moves other than to breathe. With effort he begins to relax in the ropes, his limbs loosening one by one. Every so often his body shifts and he whimpers at the pleased tingle in his limbs, the last fizzle of his wasted strength. Labored though his breathing is, a contented smile softens his mouth. 

It arouses something within you—the sight of him lying so vulnerable before you. A longing like an old familiar friend: the hunger that stirs in you when he is helpless, when he cannot fight… when he is unable to shy away the affection and pleasure you wish to lavish upon him instead of the pain he has come to expect. Between your legs, you are still dripping with Julian’s spend, and with the evidence of your own arousal. You watch his eyelids flutter, lulled insensate with too much pleasure, and you slip your hand between your legs.

Hardly a sound escapes you—but your breath must stutter, because Julian’s eyelids bat open. He turns his head to the side to gaze at you. Bare cheek pressed against the wood grain, he holds your eyes… then lifts his head off the floor ever so slightly, just enough to peer over your folded legs to where you are touching yourself, teasing yourself, red and swollen and wet.

His breath loses much of its hard-won steadiness. Transfixed, he watches each move of your fingers; when his tongue darts out to lick his lips, your heart skips a beat and you go briefly thoughtless, numbness only in the place of coherent thought.

You miss the feel of his mouth. You miss the languid sweep of his tongue against you, the warmth of his mouth, the purse of his lips. Licking his lips you can tell he is thinking the same thing—that he is trying to remember (all the way back in his slipping, failing memory) what you taste like, the way the smell of you would overwhelm him when you sat on his face. But you also know that Julian will not offer his mouth to you—not now, not with all his newly sharpened teeth—no matter how hungry he watches you. 

And then you see it, though you can’t say how or where—something in the way the corners of his eyes wrinkle, or the way his brow pinches—guilt and sorrow and  _ regret _ creeping back in and no, you will not have that, not now—you will turn his thoughts to other things, other remembrances, other pleasures.

You lay your free hand against Julian’s shoulder, pinning him to the floor, then lean over him and nuzzle your face against his collar, moaning lightly as you touch yourself. Julian stiffens, arches against you when your lips pull back on teeth and you begin to nibble, the nip your way up the tendons of his neck, towards his jaw, the way he used to like. Julian had asked for a break, a chance to catch his breath… but he does not protest as your hand roams across his body, brushing flesh and combing through feather as you work yourself closer to your own completion. 

You want Julian there with you—you want to feel him bucking against you, sobbing through another release while you finish, riding straight through your orgasm towards his. You want him stiff and begging—you slide your hand between his feathered thighs and stroke his sex with the tip of your finger. He shudders as your finger traces a light spiral, then brush, deliberately, right at the place where the organ puckers.

“Can I…? I know we’ve never…” never tried like this, never with you fucking him with your fingers. You don’t know if it will be good, if the stretch and press will please him like it used to—and foreign to him as his body is, by the look on Julian’s face, it doesn’t seem like he knows, either.

But there’s an undeniable glint in his eye; his pupils shrink, and his gaze is silvery as birch bark.

Sharp teeth pulling at his lip, his pulse jumping frantically beneath the pale skin of his throat, he nods.

You nod in response. Carefully, you swipe some of the copious spend still pooled between Julian’s legs and coat your finger with it. Slowly you coax his sex open… but the moment you slip your finger into him, he tightens around you.

No noise. No satisfied groan, no delighted hitch in his breath. His exhales slow and unsteady, bit by bit, like notches in a rope. 

Then, with what slack he has to shift in his binds, Julian lifts his hips towards your hand.

You meet him halfway—you push your finger deeper into him and Julian chokes on a gasp. When you pull out of him, the muscles of his abdomen clench fitfully; when you sink back in, the sweet, slack-jawed shock on his face leaves your own body tightening. (Between your own legs, you match the pace you set for Julian, your own mounting pleasure leaving you dizzy. It’s just that he looks so gorgeous, insensate and unashamed—and when you fuck him faster, sliding in and out of him with greater force, Julian’s eyes slip open and he looks at you with worship.

It is so close to what you remember. It sounds just the same, the way Julian’s moans are breathless; needy; delighted and wretched in turn but always mounting in volume. It looks almost the same, Julian’s head thrown back, his eyelids fluttering. What is  _ exactly _ the same is the pulse and clench of Julian’s body around your finger—and the way you feel your own body hum in sympathetic arousal. 

You brush the tip of your nose against his, press a kiss to the edge of his mouth before you pull away to look at him. “How does it feel?” 

“ _ Hah. _ ” A wet laugh, incredulous and elated. When Julian answers, his voice cracks on the words: “It feels just like it used to. It feels— _ fuck. _ ” 

Julian even swears like he used to, lips curled salaciously around the sound, relishing the feel of it on his tongue—the obscenity of it. “It feels like… like when you fingered me on the card table, in the back of the shop,” he says. “In the Tower, when you— _ oh, _ ahh, ha- just like that…” 

(You call the magic to your finger, you warm your touch and bury inside of him—Julian groans back in his throat, hips circling around your hand.)

Julian gasps, grins: “In the Countess’ private bathtub, smelling of rose petals, that—that absurd, sheer robe clinging to you… god, fuck, even that one time outside the bar.”

He’s never spoken to you like this. When has he even  _ remembered _ this much? Not since you found him, not since—but it curls your spine and your toes like it used to, leaves you with a feeling like your head is full of cotton, like your belly is molten gold. You wonder if you can make him cum like this, fucking him like this—and if he does, you wonder if he will let you ride him again after, so that you can feel him spill against you one last time as you cum—have you ever managed to make him cum  _ six _ times in a row…?

Julian convulses beneath you, moans low as you sink a second finger into him. He looks— _ oh… _ but you catch a shadow shifting in the corner of your eye, turn out of instinct—

And then you see it.

You’ve never fucked him like this, on the floor. Or maybe that doesn’t matter—more to the point, you’ve never stopped in the middle of fucking him like this, as you are now, and looked at all the broken mirrors on the walls. Though the shattered glass distorts the image, still it is clear to you: Julian is a great shadow, shining black and rustling, all his feathers standing on end. His long toes curl tight around each other ( _ the way a bird clutches a branch for perch _ ) reaching for something, anything to steady himself—coming up empty. His mis-bent legs, all strange new angles. The long black feathers of his wings draped beneath him and shining like satin.

And you, draped over him,  _ looming— _ looking keenly into his face while you get yourself off, while your wrists snaps as you sink your fingers in and out of Julian’s sex, fucking him senseless. 

The shame comes on so quick and cold it shocks you. You see the skin of your body standing in contrast against Julian’s feathers, see what a mismatched pair you look. You hear in your mind Julian’s old insistences, the ones you never gave credence to:  _ ‘I’m monstrous. It’s unnatural, what we’re doing. It’s not right.’ _ The sight threatens to turn your stomach… but you can’t look away.

You see your own eyes reflected back at you—and your face hardens.

Fuck that. Fuck  _ shame. _ What use is shame, when you’ve found Julian again? What use is shame, when he is trembling, bucking his hips against you, urging your finger deeper and faster with every whimpered cry? It’s  _ Julian _ beneath you, just like he used to be, where he belongs. You love him,  _ you love him _ … you turn your eyes back to his face, beet red, tears collecting in the corners of his eyes as he begs,  _ “please, please, please. _ ”

(No matter how he has changed—no matter how long you have been without each other—Julian still wants you, and you still have ways to give yourself to him. In the end, that is all that counts—no more.)

You fuck him on two fingers, and the pad of your thumb comes to swipe the outer ring of his sex—Julian’s legs twitch against their restraints and then he moans, pants, spills… cums wet and thin, seeping out of him and up his chest, catching on the knots of your ropework.

There’s a slick, sucking sound as you pull your fingers out of him; your hand does not travel far, settles in the soaking feathers on his abdomen and weaves among them, gripping them gently. Your other hand sets a quick pace between your legs—Julian had sounded so fucking  _ good _ when he came, and you can feel, at last, that you are not far off yourself.

“Are you…”

“Yeah. Yes,” you answer, voice barely a whisper—your body is tense, pleasure coiling in your limbs, ready to flood your body. “That was—Julian, that was so hot, I’m—”

“Will you—do you want to… to climb back on top of me, before…?”

Your hips jerk into your hand at his words, but you manage to raise your head to look at him. Wrecked as he is, Julian still manages to look aroused… a dull fire burning even through his weariness. 

“Yes,” you answer, but the word come so quick you’re not sure its audible. What is perfectly clear is the way you reach for one of the ropes and pull yourself onto your feet, the way you stumble (legs useless, tight from sitting cross-legged, tingling) but still you manage to mount him, scissoring your legs together again. You waste not a moment before rocking your sex against his—and it pulls a crushed sound out of you, crumpled and broken and  _ weak _ with how good it is, rolling your sex against the slick seeping mess between Julian’s legs.

Then flushing wetter and  _ warm— _ Julian spills between you again, cuming, near-shouting, but you reach beneath you and wind your hand around his neck and lift his head, his torso, just off the floor—he swings, suspended, and his body rocks with every thrust of your hips—he  _ lunges _ at the into the invitation of your arms, and you cradle him against you, willing your eyes to stay open, watching him—and he’s writhing, bucking against you, and as he chases his pleasure he shouts your name so loudly… and you forget, in your pleasure, where you are: you forget that no one is around to hear you, not Barth behind the bar or passers-by on the street, and the thrill of being caught is just enough to drive you over the edge. You fuck him til the whole timeless, changeless bar fades away into lightning-white pleasure and a soft delight too sweet to last.

  
  
  


When it is over, you only allow yourself a moment—ten deep breaths. Then you lift yourself off of Julian, thighs trembling from the exertion, and reach above his legs to sever the rope keeping him suspended.   


Julian is too fucked-out to be much help; he hums, noncommittally, as you free one leg than the second, and ease both gently to the ground. He’s ravished, spent—when you free his wings, he is too weak to unfold them, and you need to help him stretch them properly across the floor. As your fingers work slowly on the knots, unwinding the rope from his limbs, it’s hard to tell whether or not he’s even awake.

You’re not keen on the idea of standing (which you will have to do, when you clean yourself up) so you start with Julian, instead. Even if he is asleep, you don’t want to leave him like this—if he isn’t cleaned up, his feathers will be sticking together by the time he wakes. The prison-tavern provides a serviceably clean rag and a bucket of warm water; you gently clean the mess from his plumage, rubbing the muscles the rope cut into, easing his soreness. You’re either too focused on your work, or too weary to realize when Julian’s eyes slip open and fix on the ceiling.

He says, “I want to leave this place.”

The words stop you in your tracks. Your hand falls still, pressing the warm wet rag to Julian’s thigh but failing to clean anything. 

“What?”

Slowly, with great effort, Julian picks his head up off the floor—only an inch or two, only enough to look at you more clearly.

“You asked me to, when you found me. I remember that,” he murmurs. His arms are weak, sore from being bound behind his back, but still he manages to lift his hand… dares, even, to stroke your cheek with the back of his knuckles, his talons pointed safely away from your face. “And I… I wasn’t ready, then, to leave with you. But I am now, I no longer want to stay here. This place…” 

Julian breaks eye contact with you. His gaze drifts over the mirrors, the candles… the broken glass already accumulating again beneath you, though you’d swept it clean just before you’d tied Julian up. 

“I thought it was safe,” he says, simply, sadly. “But I don’t think it’s good for us. I hurt you here—I see that.”

You let the rag rest, raising your hand to lace your fingers with Julian’s. He stiffens, but he lets you, anyway—your fingers brush the cools scales of his hand as you hold it. 

“What are you telling me?” you ask him, voice quiet, unsteady—you barely dare to hope. “Where do you expect to go?”

“Anywhere,” Julian said. “Not here. I don’t know if it will be better, anywhere else—if I’ll be less forgetful, or less difficult… but I want to try.”

Your eyes sting. Changeless, formless time—but  _ not _ interminable. As soon as the two of you recover, you are taking him out of here. Perhaps it won’t get better; you know that is a possibility. Perhaps Julian will remain just as inconstant, as mistrustful. But this is the place he has been for years—the place where the Devil had tortured him with seductive and cruel illusions—and you have been waiting, dreaming,  _ hoping _ of the moment when you’d be able to put as much distance between Julian and this place as possible.

(Changeless, formless time—but not him. Not Julian, who has changed his mind, who has decided to leave… for you.)

You bend over him, cupping his cheek and kissing him fiercely. “I love you.”

His face is close enough that you can feel his eyelashes brush your cheeks; his lips brush yours when he speaks. “I love you more than anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: so i'm still hung up about reversed!julian—

**Author's Note:**

> written for a prompt on tumblr at @4biddenleeches  
> please excuse the typos if I edit I'll be too tempted to delete >>


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